Would Sanders Take a Cabinet Position?

[Doctor Jack]

It seems to me, Sanders doesn't want to be the VP and Clinton doesn't want to pick him as VP but I wonder if he would be able to continue pushing his agenda as a cabinet member. Wouldn't he love to be Secretary of Labor, Commerce, Treasury, or Housing and Urban Development? It seems like any of those would be right up his alley.

[rickford66]

1. Some people stil don't get it.

[LuvLoogie]

6. Bernie is like fado. Nobody groks Bernie.

[rickford66]

10. You made me Google, but I got it.

[roody]

2. I hope not. We need him in the Senate.

[Wounded Bear]

11. This...

He and Liz need to start their own Progressive wing of the party.

[truebluegreen]

3. He shouldn't.

Like VP (by design), those positions can easily be marginalized. I'd rather have him in the Senate.

IMHO the highest possible calling is to be a gadfly on the ass of the state.

[MohRokTah]

4. Would he be offered one?

Given current stances and actions, I sincerely doubt it.

[BlueMTexpat]

12. !!! eom

[think]

5. William K Black for AG. That would be impressive....

William K Black

William Kurt Black (born September 6, 1951) is an American lawyer, academic, author, and a former bank regulator.[1] Black's expertise is in white-collar crime, public finance, regulation, and other topics in law and economics. He developed the concept of "control fraud", in which a business or national executive uses the entity he or she controls as a "weapon" to commit fraud.

Background[edit]

Black earned a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine. Black is currently an Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City in the Department of Economics and the School of Law. He was the Executive Director of the Institute for Fraud Prevention from 2005-2007 and previously taught at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, and at Santa Clara University.[2]

Black was litigation director for the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB) from 1984 to 1986, deputy director of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC) in 1987, and Senior VP and the General Counsel of the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco from 1987 to 1989, which regulated some of the largest thrift banks in the U.S.[3][4]...

Read more:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_K._

[LWolf]

7. I hope not.

When a president selects a cabinet, those cabinet members are charged with enacting whose vision, whose agenda, whose ideas?

I don't want him leashed; not as vp, not in a neoliberal administration.

I'd rather see him continuing the work in the Senate.

[zenabby]

8. Nope.

We need team players. He is best left in Senate.

[cloudythescribbler]

9. Bernie has opened up the possibility of a progressive opposition, which he should help lead ...

You really can't do much to help lead a progressive opposition if you are in an Administration in any capacity

Whether HRC or Trump win in November, there will still be a crying need for the political 'revolution' Bernie has spoken of to be pursued further. Just as he has fairly consistently held to the position that he will support the Democratic nominee in November, he has also insisted that his candidacy is part of a necessary broader effort, which he has called a political revolution. To the extent that he has ANY credibility at all, that his central ideas are ones he takes seriously, and I think he does, this path is the one he necessarily needs to pursue for the rest of his political career. There needs to be the kind of permanent and long-term base ORGANIZED in the Democratic Party (something along those lines was begun in the 80s with the Rainbow Coalition), the way the RW has within the Republican Party. There are think tanks that are not only center-right, as there are center-left ones, but solidly conservative/reactionary; there are of course massive funding pillars not available in anything like the same scale to the Left; there are networks and established links between electoral and nonelectoral movements all more or less lacking in national scale on the Left.

I sincerely hope, in opposition to a LOT of fellow Bernie supporters, that this effort NOT entirely abandon or categorically reject working in the context of the Democratic Party -- there is much to be expanded upon EVEN WHILE ALSO WORKING OUTSIDE THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY, INCLUDING ELECTORALLY AS IN THE CASE OF SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE. This is where the debate is now among Bernie supporters, and I suspect that at least among the most vocal and participating of the Bernie base (those who discuss, donate, etc etc in addition to merely voting) my position is in the minority

I would say with confidence that at least among Bernie's supporters, the support for this idea is near zero, and it would be ENTIRELY inconsistent with everything Bernie has said about his larger political vision over the past year and a half.

It is the kind of suggestion that almost certainly comes from OUTSIDE the Bernie camp, particularly from HRC supporters